Hey blog-readers, most of you have probably bumped into this already, but here is my rundown on this new rumor/blooper. It's about Games Workshop's new Stormraven, and if you haven't heard about it too much yet, I'm sure you'll be excited to read more. I'll try to get news up to date in the comments.

Several Games Workshop players were simply looking for an FAQ Veteran's Day morning in the USA when they bumped into this.

While this does look like a bit of a kitbash, this was on Games Workshops website under the FAQ section of the gaming articles. Here is a screenshot of someone's browser when they were on the site and a quote of the full text.

"Over the next few pages, we will be taking a look at how to paint the Blood Angels Stormraven Gunship, including how to weather the vehicle and paint the interior detail. A great addition and centrepiece model for any Blood Angels army, this will be an invaluable guide to help you get the most from this fantastic kit.

Death from Above
The Stormraven Gunship is an incredibly versatile craft, able to fulfill the roll of orbital dropship, armoured transport and strike aircraft in a way that few, or indeed any, ships could hope to match. The Stormraven ensures that the Blood Angels remain undisputed masters of the skies, as dominant in the air as their troops are on the ground. Smaller and nimbler than the more cumbersome Thunderhawk Gunships, the Stormraven's compact hull and vectored thrusters enable it to operate at maximum efficiency in all but the densest terrain. A Stormraven can often be seen hurtling straight into the heart of the enemy forces, unleashing its considerable arsenal in a terrifying display of firepower, before disgorging a squad, Dreadnought, or even both, into the thick of the fighting.

On the tabletop
With its potent firepower, speed and transport capacity, the uses of a Stormraven on the battlefield are myriad, but its role of choice is as an unparalleled assault vehicle. With a huge variety of weapon options, and no less than four tank-busting Bloodstrike Missiles, both enemy infantry and vehicles alike fear drawing the attention of its guns. A transport capacity of 12 combined with the ability to safely carry a Dreadnought to battle as well certainly proves the Stormraven to be a transport vehicle of the very finest quality. This unique combination of speed, firepower and transport capacity means that a Stormraven can support any tactical preference, so there is always a place for it in any Blood Angels army.

Nick: A Stormraven will be the focal point of your army, so it's well worth giving it a lot of attention when painting it. These techniques can effectively be applied to any other vehicles in your Blood Angels army too, so keep this in mind and you will have a great looking fleet of vehicles in no time. I painted this Stormraven to match the battleforce that I painted for the Blood Angels army workshop in February 2011's White Dwarf; it's part of the 3rd Company, in keeping with the rest of the models. As a personal touch, I've weathered the model to appear heavily battle worn, but if you wish to keep your vehicle in pristine condition, skip page 6 and you'll have an immaculate vehicle, fresh as if at the beginning of a campaign."

Now, this could be a prank, but chances are is it was a bit of a screw up, somehow.

This can be both good and bad news for the gaming community. For one, it does confirm that the Stormraven is going to be released, around February 2011 and it does give us insight on how the new model will look. Love it or hate it, it's a new model for the Blood Angels. This also means that conversion of the Stormraven, which many will argue looks much better than this, will slow down sharply. With an official model out there, people will be inclined and occasionally forced to use it.

What else does it tell us? Well, we might be seeing some more 40k models released around that time, too. Perhaps we'll see some Tyranids, which lack many of their models, or Dark Eldar to add to the flyer scheme. What is for sure is that GW is taking a drift towards flyers in 5th edition and many codices will probably be seeing one.

And what about Grey Knights? Rumors have had it that they will be a February/March release and also have access to the Stormraven, but they make no note of it here. It is a bit dismaying, but people have also said that the Stormraven will be released before Grey Knights are. Still, this refers to February's White Dwarf in the past tense, as if it was already released. At this point, Grey Knights would hopefully already be announced and it would have probably be mentioned about them having access to it too in order to build up hype.

We can't be sure if this means no Grey Knights in quarter one or whether or not Grey Knights will be getting the Stormraven, but this news leans towards no to at least one of those. I'm sure many of you have plenty of comments about these rumors to spew out, so get at it!

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I actually don't mind it, and I think once we get some more pics it'll look better. Even if it does cost more than a valk a lot of players will buy them for two reasons. 1) It's still going to be cheaper than the current £60+ cost of the valk/raider conversions 2) A lot of people lack either the time or skills necessary to make a conversion look like a proper model rather than two stuck together. What's more likely than the model stopping me buying one is the rules, if it's simply a copy/paste of the BA one it won't be worth it unless GK's get much much more survivable out in the open, otherwise we might as well use raiders which offer much better protection.

What a peice of $@#!.This really is a terrible design.You'd have to be blind and have no taste to even touch the thing, EVEN if your a Space Marine player, which probably means your standards are almost non-existant.

Honestly I think the whole concept has been totally mishandled from the start when it was put into the BA codex, BA are already a finesse army and this unit just takes it to rediculous levels thanks to its cost vs survivability.

There are also plenty of kit bashes online using little more than a valk and other common vehicle weapon spares.

Although I'm not entirely convinced it's a bad model yet, my friends and I have taken to calling it the Storm Guppy or Squall Guppy. I just think it needs less wing logos and more Boltgun and Silver colors. The top turret with air scoop is a little much, I'll admit.